The reason being; trying to control a large group of people would be hard. You could use force, but if you get too violent, what happens? Revolt! In this sense, the need for lots of observation seems very realistic. So, Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon" was in a sense, the perfect solution to this very real problem. This method of maintaining control was ideal for two reasons: first, it makes all the citizens in a given society act like model citizens, and secondly, it costs next to nothing. Done away with are the needs to have material constraints, arms, and physical violence. All that remains is a gaze; a powerful, omniscient gaze. Now, the one person in the lone observation tower obviously cannot keep his/her on every subject all the time. But since the observed cannot possibly tell when or when not they are being watched, they have no choice but to assume that they are being looked down upon at every moment, and thus act accordingly. The only problem with Bentham's idea when it was conceived was the time period. In the 18th century, the technology simply did not exist to allow constant observation of everyone .
/3.
who supposedly needed it. The idea would have to wait nearly 300 years for someone to approve upon it.
In this, the age where anyone can possess a digital camera, and where everybody is surrounded by interactive television and all kinds of high-tech miniature equipment, we as a people are consistently led to believe that everyone is being watched by someone else, as in maybe an anonymous security guard. Foucault predicted modern society as placing all of us under constant surveillance (Chesier, www.foucault.info.html). This prediction has of course come true. Government projects like Homeland Security and "Total Information Awareness" have created the kind of 24 hr. surveillance that the Gestapo and the KGB would have drooled over. However, unlike Bentham's idea, there now exists a true "Panopticon", but this is one where the subjects either do not know, or do not believe that they are being watched.
